Computer Fun

[andrewducker]

Speaking of which, my computer started randomly restarting on a 5-minutely basis earlier.  Something is most definitely up with it.

In the end, I un-installed a bunch of strange things that have accreted on it, and when it restarted it paused for about two minutes as the desktop first appeared, before any of the usual programs could auto-start.

And, in an attempt to get things working I killed off the "explorer" process (which runs the desktop and the rest of the startup process) and restarted it.  Which didn't get things running, but it did mean that when things spontaneously started running again a couple of minutes later, that there weren't quite so many things running.

And lo and behold, my computer is running perfectly smoothly, without any hard drive sounds, slowdown or any of the other strangenesses that have been happening recently.

When I get back from Kent I'm going to reformat the damn thing and start over.  You never know, I might actually be able to resist the urge to install loads of stupid things on it this time.

Comments

[themongkey.livejournal.com]

XP is the first stupid thing you should uninstall ;o)

[andrewducker]

If I had access to something better then I would.

"Better" in this case meaning "Something that will run Half-Life 2 without crashing"

Although XP has worked just fine since I originally installed this box, about 2 years ago, and I will insist on installing and uninstalling a load of stuff for the hell of it, so I'm not too fussed.

[momlady.livejournal.com]

I just reformatted my computer last week, just so I could get all the unused programs, or ones I'd forgotten I had, off my computer. Although I didn't have that much on it to begin with (less than 1/4 hard space used), I only put back those programs, etc., that I use and it runs so much better now. I'm sure you'll find the same thing will happen for you, and it won't take too long...only updating IE and Windows takes the longest.

Happy reformatting!
(My dad hates Windows and uses Linux....

:)

[azalemeth.livejournal.com]

Oblivion (on my new 6200 Joy) insists on machine-level crashes at least once every match in the arena, and rarely elsewhere. Windows then *insists* that it's *my ram* causing it to automatically restart, not the NT Kernel. Linux runs everything without bother - before I restarted into windows, I had uptime of around 65 days. In the arena, 'doze manages about 6.5 minutes....and this is a new install of XP.

...So why do I want to buy a new casefan too?

[andrewducker]

Have you tried running Memtest to see if there is a memory problem? Linux may just be coping with it better...

http://www.memtest.org/ will give you a bootable floppy/ISO image that you can leave running for an hour or two...